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Expert's Guide
Introduction So you've been playing Ikariam for some time now. You've progressed nicely up until this point, but maybe finding the long build times boring and the increased costs prohibitive? This guide introduces ideas to help you enjoy playing Ikariam as much as you did in those first weeks. There is always plenty to do. Where to go next * Expand your towns to level 25 for greater gold production. * Buy all 160 trade ships. * One use of action points is to raid inactives (most of which never revive and therefore should be raided so that their resources are not wasted). Huge returns from inactives, sometimes tens of thousands of resources, for no cost after their remaining defense has been destroyed. * Then there's trading. What sizes are your trading posts? If they are big enough (such as level 15), you can see far enough to pick the bargains for resale at a profit. * Build an 8th or 9th town, make it a challenge to get there and upgrade your Governor's Residence at vast expense. The benefits of an 8th town become clear when you can field a much larger army than your opponent who has only 7 towns. * What about forming an Alliance Island? Find an empty one and get members to populate it. * Try to get in the top 500 on the high scores * Have fun buying up expensive stock, and being the only one selling at silly low prices. * Get your floor of your town to all marble (upgrade your town hall). * Break soft caps on your walls and town halls. Approaches There are many ways to keep busy during the endgame of ikariam, when you have maxed out your towns, researches and upgrades. This section will detail some of the more interesting strategies. War Conflicts in ikariam are fun and they can be time-consuming. Don't enter into one unless you're sure you'll have regular access to ikariam all hours of the day. Alliance wars are becoming rare between strong alliances, with large coalitions formed of many alliances in order to keep the peace. Yet when they do occur they can be vicious and the ultimate test of your empire's strength and your own tactical and strategic abilities. What can be equally fun though is to fight a single player, of equal or greater size to you, on your own. This may require an agreement with the other player that neither of you will bring in allies to help, as 1vs1 can quickly become 1vs10 if things go badly. Finally what many advanced players do is to help other players, either as a paid mercenary or altruistically. This has the benefit of keeping you busy as well as benefiting either your treasury or your conscience, depending on whether or not you demanded payment. There are two major limiting factors in Ikariam wars; population and distance. Since each of your citizens produces 3 gold when not being used as a scientist or worker they are the basic means of funding your army. Higher population means that you can have larger armies, therefore you want as many towns as possible, each with high levelled town halls. However by selling resources on the market you can top-up your gold supplies and run an army at a deficit. Distance is an important factor because if it will take your troops 8 hours to arrive at their destination there may be a very large army waiting for them. Here proxy colonies or occupied towns become a vital strategy for any serious general, as using these as a launchpoint for your armies means that they are only 15 minutes away from any town on that island. During a war it is important to remain polite in messages, and to try and consider the implications of your actions. Occupying a small player to use his town as a springing point for your attacks may seem harmless, but his alliance may think otherwise and attack you in return. Likewise a player may have annoyed you by winning a battle, but they may be a nice and friendly person who, in other circumstances, you could be friends with - best not to alienate them. Trade Influence your local market by selling the resource that is generally the cheapest for the highest possible price, not with the intention of selling it (although for 99 gold a piece it can't be a bad deal), but with the intention of raising the price of that resource on a long term. For example: Your starter town has always been on a crystal island,(crystal is 1 of the best resources on the game because it can help you reasearch and earn those points you need)and crystal has always been to cheap to sell so money has been a problem for you. Next to that you have one colony, on a resource of your liking (marble?). You want to start selling crystal for a normal price but there are always several players offering large amounts for low low prices (8 to 12 per piece for example) so you're looking for a way to make a profit. Put as much crystal on the market you possibly can for a high high price (99 for example), and keep it up there for as long as it takes (in my experience a week or two). When the prices don't seem to rise, you do the unexpected thing: You upgrade your trade post and warehouse a couple of times and then offer double or triple the amount of the player selling the most in your area. What will happen is this: The other players see your ridiculous price and start wondering if there would be anyone crazy enough to buy your crystal while theirs is so cheap. People start buying crystal, and soon most crystal is sold out leaving only the 99 a piece crystal, and amounts of crystal that will not even fill one cargo ship and are therefore never going to be bought until that player puts up more crystal. When players then return to their trading post to do so, they will notice that the only reasonable amount of crystal being sold is at 99 a piece, therefore all prices are open to them! Greed takes over from hereon, and soon prices will be at a nice 30 to 40, up to 80 a piece. Remember to have a higher warehouse in your town than other players, and make sure you can sell amounts of a resource that greatly exceed that of other players in your area, for example: most players sell 1200 of one resource in your area, then you upgrade your trading post (and warehouse so you can keep the resource on the trading post without worrying about room in your own stock) until you can sell 3 to 5 times as much, and actually put it up there. Don't be afraid to use a portion of the resource in your trading post, it will only fool the others into thinking people are actually paying you 99 a piece for small amounts, and as an added bonus you're able to use up some of it when needed, so you can put it back up when you've collected enough again. This can also be done the other way, but no-one really likes selling cheaper than the rest, so it is rarely to be used the other way around. Piracy The pillaging of other player's towns to loot their resources. Fun and profitable, and quite likely to get you into trouble if you do it a lot - therefore if you're bored and want a fight, pillage everyone you can in your area and don't stop when they ask you to! If however you just want to gain resources quickly, there are some important steps you should take. Firstly, upgrade your hideouts to lvl 32. This way you should be able to successfully spy most targets, finding those with high resources and low military. Secondly build a very strong pillaging army; this should really be comprised of little more than Gunsman and Bombardiers. Since many high value targets will have walls doubling their defense it is vital that your offensive score beats their defensive score by more than 3x so that the battle takes only 1 round. Thirdly, either establish a colony on the island that you wish to pillage or occupy a small town there. This means that your enemy has only 15 minutes warning of your attack, and is therefore unlikely to be able to send reinforcements to his town. Speed is of the essence in piracy; move quickly, attack quickly and retreat quickly before anyone can take retribution. Such piracy is both incredibly profitable and intense fun. Note: for maximum profitability you should have the full complement of 160 trade ships to pillage a full 80k goods each time. Some players also choose to leave behind enough trade ships when pillaging to evacuate their army if necessary, a strategy well worth following in many cases. Category:Guides